Continuing what has become something of an annual tradition, films of considerable length have
colonized U.S. movie screens during Oscar season — from Hollywood releases such as
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (two hours, 41 minutes) and
The Wolf of Wall Street (2:59) to art-house fare such as
Blue Is the Warmest Color (2:59).

In recent years, high-grossing Hollywood movies have swollen in size to accommodate — and
justify — costly special effects.

(The website Business Insider found that the 10 top-grossing movies of 2012 were 20 minutes
longer than those from 1992.)

But end-of-year, awards-ready films have long gone long. Beginning with silent epics such as
Birth of a Nation (1915) and
Intolerance the next year, serious-minded filmmakers have captivated (and held captive)
audiences for 21/2 to three hours and beyond.

Just because we’re accustomed to prestige pictures running long doesn’t mean they can’t still be
enervating.

From the tenor of some recent reviews, one might think editor Thelma Schoonmaker had forgotten
to cut
The Wolf of Wall Street.

But Schoonmaker says that was precisely director Martin Scorsese’s design.

“A film like
Wolf is intended to be sprawling,” she said in an interview. “Marty wanted things to go
just a little too far in the scenes sometimes, to test the patience of the audience just a bit.
Because that’s what the whole movie is about.”

Much as composing a long novel presents different challenges than a short story does, editing
longer films is an art of sorts.

An extended running time allows for more ground to be covered, albeit ground over which pace and
rhythm, not to mention the audience’s attention, can be hard to maintain.

Few editors have as much experience with longer-form features as Schoonmaker.

She has worked on 18 of Scorsese’s features (as well as videos and TV specials) since
Raging Bull in 1980, for which she took home an Academy Award. Six of the Scorsese films
on which she has worked had running times exceeding 21/2 hours.

“It’s hard for people to understand editing, I think,” she said. “It’s absolutely like
sculpture. You get a big lump of clay, and you have to form it — this raw, unedited, very long
footage.”

She said there was never a target length for Scorsese’s films and that
Wolf had evolved in shape and tempo to accommodate both classic Scorsese set pieces and
looser, improvised scenes.

“It had a strange rhythm — of rushing forward and then stopping, rushing forward and then
stopping,” she said. “It was something that we struggled a bit with. Very different from other
films I’ve worked on.”

Yet despite the infinite possibilities in that original mass of footage — the multiple takes,
the endless combinations of scenes — Schoonmaker said films eventually find a shape at which they
click.

“Until you get it to the right length, it’s like a woman who’s on a diet who wants to get into a
dress to go to an event,” she said.

For Schoonmaker and Scorsese, who have long danced on the edge of art and commerce, even their
more audacious films are shaped with audiences in mind. They preview cuts of a film as many as 12
times and pay close attention to body language.

“When you’re in a movie with an audience, you can feel where a film is dragging,” she said. “
People start to move. They fidget.”

Yet editors will say a long film can be made to feel fleet while a tidier one can feel
interminable.

“One of the paradoxes of filmmaking is that sometimes a film that feels too long can be too
short,” said Joshua Oppenheimer, who oversaw the shaping of his critically acclaimed documentary,
The Act of Killing, into three lengths: a

160-minute director’s cut, a 120-minute American theatrical version and a 95-minute TV
version.

Scorsese might be able to get away with a three-hour film but, apparently, not a four-hour one.
Schoonmaker said a cut of
Wolf at that length had performed well in test screenings, but “It’s just not feasible to
distribute that.”

That might be true for big-budget Hollywood movies, but, in recent years, independent
distributors have found creative ways to release even longer films.

For the historical epic
Che (4:30), IFC Films revived the roadshow strategy of a limited release and a higher
ticket price.

In the spring, Magnolia Pictures will release Lars von Trier’s four-hour sexcapade
Nymphomaniac in two parts, two weeks apart. After the second premiere, the entire film
will be viewable in succession — though only with the purchase of separate tickets.